Have you heard of the "wet paddocks cause rain" phenomena? These are stories that confuse cause and effect.
Just as an appreciation of the immediate history of an area can help determine whether or not the ground was wet before it rained, the writings of the early explorers can give us an appreciation of the state of the environment before European settlement.
In my column, "Putting Murray River where its mouth is" (The Land, February 5, p15), I suggested that the River's mouth could reasonably be considered to be where the River enters Lake Alexandrina near Wellington -- rather than below the barrages and the lakes which is the current official position of the mouth. There has been considerable interest in this issue including a rebuttal from John Formby ("Misled on Murray", The Land letters, February 19, p20).
Famed explorer, Charles Sturt, also thought the mouth was where the River enters Lake Alexandrina. Sturt recorded his impressions in February 1830 as follows, "The view was one for which I was not altogether prepared. We had, at length, arrived at the termination of the Murray. Immediately below me was a beautiful lake, which appeared to be a fitting reservoir for the noble stream that had led us to it; and which was now ruffled by the breeze that swept over it".
Charles Sturt was in a whale boat, food supplies were low, and he was apparently suffering from tooth-ache.
He spent the next several days crossing Lake Alexandrina and his observations provide insight into the lake's environment before European settlement. Stuart wrote, "I was surprised at the extreme shallowness of the lake in every part, as we never had six feet upon the line". And, "Thus far, the waters of the lake had continued sweet; but (on the second day) the transition from fresh to salt water was almost immediate".
As he attempted to reach the ocean from the southern extremity of the lake complex he observed, "it was in vain that we beat across the channel from one side to the other it was a continued shoal (submerged sandbank), and the deepest water appeared to be under the left bank.
"The tide, however, had fallen, and exposed broad flats, over which it was hopeless, under existing circumstances, to haul the boat. We again landed on the south side to the channel, patiently to await the high water".
But subsequent attempts were also futile with Sturt reporting that, "Shoals again closed in upon us on everyside. We drag the boat over several, and at last got amongst quicksands ... I found we had struck the south coast deep in the bight of Encounter Bay".
The next day he reported, "If I had previously any hopes of being enabled ultimately to push the boat over the flats that were before us, a view of the channel at low water, convinced me of the impracticability of any further attempt. The water was so low that every shoal was exposed, and many stretch directly from one side of the channel to the other".
In 1830 Sturt wrote that the Murray River terminated at the entrance to Lake Alexandrina. The southern perimeter of the Lake, now officially the Murray's Mouth, was then a maze of impassable sandbars. The explorer's observations indicate that Lake Alexandrina was shallow and salty and without a navigable passage to the ocean many decades before water was first extracted from the Darling and Murray Rivers for irrigation.
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